Various Artists - Plague Songs - album review

Various Artists

Plague Songs (4AD)

COMPILATION

My admittedly limited reading of the biblical plagues suggest some pretty nasty and brutal business. Which makes me wonder why this collection allows King Creosote to be so jaunty about swathes of frogs and gives Stephin Merritt the OK to get all chirpy about lice. Still, Brian Eno and Robert Wyatt seem to have got the idea a bit more with their version of the flies containing some bug-like sound effects while Cody ChesnuTT’s boils certainly feel mighty sore.

There are also some fine efforts from the spirited Tiger Lillies (hail) and the bruising Klashnekoff (blood) but the run-for-the-hills award goes to Scott Walker for his piercingly operatic imagining of darkness.